Writing about controversial topics

I was just involved in a discussion about writing about controversial subjects.

Sexuality, rape, incest, violence, abuse, misogyny, homophobia, sexism, racism, political and religious viewpoints, assisted dying..... the list goes on.

Do you write about controversial topics? How do you approach them? Do you show both sides? Do you let your own ideology into it, or not? Is it impossible to keep the biases of the writer out of it? Should that even be a goal?

What advice would you give a new writer about writing about controversial topics?

 

I can't say I tackle the common controversies. I like to look in places people take for granted, under the rocks we zoom over as givens on one argument or another. Otherwise there's that risk of being sensationalist, clambering for the latest currency, and it usually doesn't age well, leaving a work overshadowed by its context. All that said, and while I'm not far from being a new writer myself...

There's the usual: use nuance, there are closer to forty sides rather than two, don't ask permission, and it's okay to explore a topic without coming to a conclusion. Since we're all human, everyone is licensed to entertain different instantiations of the human condition under its array of different possible conditions.

My more unusual advice is that if we're talking about 'hot' controversy, a writer should distance himself from the current language surrounding it as much as he possibly can, because it's wholly mired by the mortar pits resultant of shallow digital-news lifecycles and general campaigning. Avoiding loaded terms will force him to write with a clearer connection to the ideas, and the reader will actually have to think about what she's reading, too. Alternatively, the terms could be used in ways that illustrate how odd their original usage is. E.g. consider that committing a school shooting and leaving behind a manifesto is a form of self expression. Now go ask people on the street if self expression is a good thing. Count how few of them will actually ask what is being expressed and how.

 

The best example of doing this is the way the original star trek dealt with racism in one episode. They took the issue, and completely flipped it into a form that distanced the issue from the debate at the time. They had two different aliens, with two tone skin. One alien had darker skin on the left, the other had darker skin on the right. It mirrored the debate in such a way no one was offended by it.

Aside from that, you can give a character you don't want the readers to like a trait like that.

 

This is really good advice. It might be achieved by using different POVs from different sides of the issue. Let's suppose there is a character who falls on what society calls the "wrong side" of the issue. There's a challenge there for the writer to approach the character with empathy and humanize them.

I never read it, but maybe you have heard of the novel "The Kindly Ones." Written from the POV of a Nazi SS officer, the book stirred up a lot of controversy. One reviewer called the author, Jonathan Littell, a "pornographer of violence."

Littell explains that he developed the main character by imagining what he would have done and how he would have behaved if he had been born into Nazi Germany.

 

Too many people are prowling the airwaves and bookstores looking for something they can use to trigger feelings of "righteous" anger, moral superiority, and social outrage. I come down on the side of writing the damn story without weighing every word for possible repercussions from the chronically offended. With luck, some group will try to have the resulting book banned from libraries and a jillion other people will buy it simply to protest censorship.

 

You have to stand up for truth even in those crazy periods when the society falls into black-and-white polarized thinking and starts up the witch trials. It happens again and again, it's a cycle. The more tyrannical and unhealthy the society becomes, the more taboo truth becomes, and subtlety and nuance along with it. But it's the fearless truth-tellers who bring these regimes down.

 

And it's the fearless truth-seekers who are the first targeted by totalitarian regimes that champion populism over intellectualism and art.

 

Don't let anyone scare you into oversimplified black-and-white thinking on their terms. They win mostly through fear alone. It's why a few brave souls can always bring them down.

 

If someone is writing is about a topic, they are a non-fiction writer.
Non-fiction is a decadent sub-genre of science fiction, where the storyworld's presence is concealed using empirical observations, and traditionally the only characters are the narrator and the reader, like in rhetoric.
In fiction, we write about what characters think about controversial topics. Which might be anything - hopefully it is printable.
Sometimes fiction stories are received as being about a topic, rather than about characters. An example might be One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest re. deinstitutionalization. If readers are correct in this analysis (which is a big if), the story isn't fiction but polemic.
Polemic is evil because it dragoons fiction into mentally subjugating readers. The bourgeoisie preen their intellects with non-fiction, while dumping polemic on the masses.

 

This is an important distinction. At the same time, it’s worth noting that the characters are the creations of the writer. The writer decides what every character will say and do. Maybe in a non-fiction, you keep your biases out of it, but is that a reasonable expectation for fiction?

So if I am to understand you, polemic is only evil in fiction, but not nonfiction? Why? Why can't a fiction writer take a stand?

It’s up to the wrier if they want to be polemic or not. A polemic argument is an argument that attacks something else. I can’t agree that polemic is always evil. It depends on what is being attacked.

Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792) is considered polemic. Her main polemic argument is that the educational system manipulated women to be “incapable” or “disadvantaged.” Critical Race Theory follows in this tradition. It posits that patterns of discrimination result from systemic and public policy.

And so if a fiction writer has something to say about it, they should have the freedom to do so.

I'm trying to understand what you mean by this. How would you characterize this bourgeoisie of whom you speak? And are you suggesting that preened intellects somehow manipulate the masses? I'm just trying to understand.

In any case, the question remains: what should a writer do with a controversial subject? Tell their truth, surely, while at the same time enriching the story with contrasting views.

 

It's your story. Write it, and devil take the hindmost. Everything else above is blather.

 

I write controversial topics all the time. How I approach it depends on what I’m writing. If it’s a poem, I write what I think without shame. If it’s a story, I write the characters as they would act if they were real people, including those whose views oppose my own, but make sure the story itself, the plot and everything, fit in with what I think.

You’ve heard of transgressive literature? I write that kind of thing, but in reverse—blatantly and shockingly traditionalist. Check out the link to my work in my signature if you want to see what I mean.

As for how I do it, I take Richard Price’s advice about not writing about the horrors of war, but about a child’s burnt socks on the road. Instead of writing about abortion, for example, I chose to write about a baby miscarried at 14 weeks (though I have taken the subject head-on before). I also attack the underlying assumptions that even people on my side share—using the same issue as an example, I’ve written poems attacking our culture’s anti-mother, anti-child beliefs that are accepted by even many pro-life people (again, read my work if you’re curious—I’m not going to repeat myself in this thread unless asked).

 

I say characters and their writers are of one essence. When a character is being written, I'm not - and vice-versa.

We are ephemeral chunks of flesh, moulded and warped into the service of what is novel.
What we think about the price of eggs doesn't matter.

 

This.

I’m actually trying to get noticed by the big names in the poetry world, who I know would hate my work. I’m hoping they verbally rip me to shreds—it means my work is powerful enough that my haters know who I am. One of them has an entire hate page dedicated to my friend, and I’m envious.

 

I often cover racial discrimination in my ‘cat stories’ [as my friends call them] because it goes well with the themes I already have incorporated [identity, the importance of the past, etc.] and it can be addressed in a ‘actually pay attention and you’ll notice’ way [because it’s cats and not people] and not the patronizing shoving-up-the-throat way it’s normally done these days

The interesting part about it, though, is that the same people who criticize works for not being sensitive enough or whatever is my audience [age group and fandom wise] so when the controversial themes come along it’ll be interesting to observe the reaction

 

There you go, getting esoteric again. I'm not sure if you do it to challenge, or confound, but I'll give it a shot.

"Moulded and warped" - No, there are independent thinkers. They take it all in, and come to their own conclusions. They also tend to read a lot.

"Into the service of what is novel." - I look instead to where we've been and come to the conclusion that we can find the truth of us in our history.

"What we think ... doesn't matter." - Well, thinking gives me my biggest buzz, so, yeah, what I think matters.

 

While the current discussion hits many important points. I notice there is one point that has barely been touched upon. That is the narcissistic nature of social media and the virtue signaling that has spawned cancel culture. Are these people truly offended, or just putting on an act to increase their likes? Can the real or perceived outrage be used to increase the audience for the work? Some points to consider.

 

I'm trying to think of ways to connect this to the original question - "What does the writer do with controversial topics?"

So we're looking at the influence of social media? From what I have seen of it, it is ill-informed. I don't think I would pay much attention while formulating my story.

 

The Society of Classical Poets is one of the favorite targets of one of the big names in the poetry world (the guy who has a hate page for my friend). The moderator says he’s driving traffic to our site.

 

I think it's important for writers to take on controversial topics. Many years ago, I was a journalist and sort of carved out a niche for myself writing about the education systems in post war countries. I felt like I could really show the effects of war by looking to the young people inheriting this history. Also, I just want to add that I went to these places to write my stories and the things I wrote about were controversial. I think it's a journalists job (and a hard job) to expose truths. My magazine pieces went through very extensive fact checking. As a journalist, your name and your byline are everything. Getting it right is everything. I do feel like I wrote important stories that wouldn't have been covered and that my work was important. Did I have a bias? I would like to think not. I worked very hard and was taken seriously in the field. I also don't believe that the publications I wrote for would have published my stories if I wrote them with any kind of agenda. I feel that way about my overseas work and my work as a journalist in America.

Now I write literary fiction and essays which is a lot different. I feel like it's okay to have bias, and maybe it's even necessary with creative writing. But I believe it's best to have a light touch when taking on controversial topics with this kind of writing. If you look at Orwell's essays, you can see how he took on writing about the times through storytelling. I just love his essays. He used his personal stories to highlight bigger issues and was truly a master of creative nonfiction.

In fiction, I feel like Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants is a great example of how to write about a controversial topic with a light touch. Here's a link to that short story for anyone not familiar with it who wants to check it out.

https://faculty.weber.edu/jyoung/English 2500/Readings for English 2500/Hills Like White Elephants.pdf

 

Extremely important! Only through the workings of art is truth approached.

And I am not sure when writing fiction that bias cannot be avoided. The writer writes from who they are, and they have to follow the muse.

 

I like this. Get it all out here. You got an opinion, frame it in art.

 

I think if we had a contest to see whose writing offends the most people, I would win first place by a landslide. I’m further to the right than even most Christians I’ve met, Catholic or not, and I offend quite a few of them with my ideas as well.

 

And I have to ask you, in the interests of writers everywhere, why do you do it?